


Lio Fotia: Unextinguished

by CharmPoint



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Gen, M/M, i interpret it like i want it okay, i love lio hes fluffy, lio is on 24/7 overthinking lockdown, one loser thinking all too much about his feelings and the mellowing of thereof, that means i must break him open like a coconut, the ship is there but barely we are on 24/7 lio lockdown, written in an hour and a half no joke take that as u will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24207061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharmPoint/pseuds/CharmPoint
Summary: If the fire came because of your anger, if the fire burned because of it, what happens when the fire leaves, what happens when it takes anger with it.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	Lio Fotia: Unextinguished

**Author's Note:**

> I watched promare and hour and a half ago went hm n wrote this, there you go thats what u get

He was not prepared to give it up.

He was not prepared to give up the fire.

It left him slowly but suddenly, with no warning just a receding warmth that escaped through his fingers, through his veins into the cold expanse of space, returning home, returning home and leaving him stranded and cold.

It was a pit in his stomach and ice in his veins, it had been so long, it had been so long since it all started he could hardly remember, his past was an altar he built a pyre on, a pyre to feed the hunger blooming through his blood, hunger for fire and destruction, an angry need to level everything around him into ash.

It was not an unfamiliar feeling.

He felt his anger drown him in its heat long, long before he felt it burst into flames in his hands.

It was anger given life, it was spite and hatred and unfairness of it all, one thing after another, thrown around and thrown away until he wanted to scream, until he wanted to cry, until he wanted to bring the world down around him if it was so determined to bring him down itself.

And then it was gone.

It was a shattering experience; it was a thunder strike during a clear day, it was the world shifting away from under him and the long, long fall through space underneath.

Who was he without fire.

Who was he without anger.

Who was he without someone to save, someone to crush, a legion depending on him, their needs keeping him alive and focused.

Goal orientation, one step at a time, his fire was strong and it was hungry and it was set to consume the world around him and he had always been an angry person but he had never been an explosion until it was all taken away until his fuel was no longer righteous rage but loss and hatred and desperation. 

And now he wasn’t even that, wasn’t even a destruction razing the city to the ground out of grief. 

He was just

Cold.

Empty.

The fire caught on because of the anger, the frustration, a reaction to the pain. It had burned on justice and spite and dozens of people who looked at him like he was the only thing that could save them.

It had all burned down at those last moments and he felt like it was all taken away as his fire left him and 

And he told himself, he told himself through sleepless nights and tired mornings, he told himself that this was okay, this was normal, this was just how much a regular human being whose emotions aren’t endless flames feels through the day. He told himself that and he pretended that the weight of Galo on his chest was the comforting warmth of his fire instead.

He was sensitive to cold now.

It had been, so, so long since he felt cold but now it was all he felt no matter how strongly the sun shone no matter how warm the weather was.

There had been a time before the fire but it felt like an entirely different life. He was fire and fire was him and it felt like losing an essential piece of his soul, an essential piece of the way he related to the world, an essential piece of who people saw when they looked at him. 

He lost a part of himself that burned the brightest and who was he now but the same person before it all started, angry enough to consume the world but pushing it all deep, deep down inside until all the vitriol in his stomach caught fire.

He was so helpless back then and he felt so helpless now, unable to get out of the bed because the world was so cold at five in the morning and Galo could shout his head off about how all he needed was exercise to warm up, but he knew, he knew the cold was soul deep and not something that could be chased away with moving muscles or even two hands wrapped around his shoulders, promising to warm him when his fire couldn’t.

He didn’t tell Galo.

Of course he didn’t, he was never the kind of person to tell, he had to be strong, he had to be a leader, even now ex-Burnish looked at him for support, even though they all knew well enough that he had no power to protect them during their tentative reintegration into society, aside from maybe power of his words and his nerves and his firm refusal to let himself be walked over. 

Leaders didn’t spend their nights staring at their hand in the dark, wishing to see it ignite. 

He didn’t tell anyone.

He didn’t tell Galo.

And by all accounts Galo shouldn’t know because he slept like a rock, wrapped around Lio like an octopus, snoring so loud that Lio had a built in excuse for why he always looked so tired that would entail laugher and not pity.

And still, somehow he knew.

An idiot’s instinct, could be nothing else, because Galo never thought more than one step ahead of him and maybe not even that if it didn’t involve punching. But he was so stupidly earnest, so passionately straight forward, he kept surprising Lio anyway, even though he announced his actions from the top of a tower and there was nothing at all complex in the way his thoughts lead to his actions and back again.

He probably didn’t really know, he probably just felt it and reacted to it, kept Lio busy whenever he could, dragging him from one place to the other, city wide clean ups and apartment wide game matches and every time Lio got out of a meeting, because meetings had to be had, because it was still us and them, he would be there waiting, that big grin on his face, probably covered in sooth and missing a shirt.

And it helped.

It helped a little.

To let himself be carried away by that overenthusiasm, to let himself feed a little into the bravado and the recklessness. He felt half empty but he couldn’t think about it much when Galo kept him distracted, when his arms were so warm and his grin so wide, when he would drown out even the sound of Lio’s motor with his shouting when Lio proved he didn’t need promare to make the concrete scream.

The world felt muted, the world felt incomplete, he had spent years with his emotions burning up and reigniting in an endless cycle of destruction and salvation and now, what he was left with felt like too little, felt like too quiet, felt like too cold.

But it had been like this once before.

It wasn’t too little, it was just normal and it was him who had burned too bright for far too long.

Logic and reason and tact and patience.

He had lived with little before and then he got used to burning.

It only stood to reason he would get used to this too, maybe not soon, maybe not soon at all, but he would, eventually, feel like he was no longer bare wood waiting for the pyre. 

Until then he just had to keep on moving, no matter what challenge the world threw against him next. He had seen it all and he had a clean record in victory as far as he was concerned. 

His flames might be extinguished but he never will be.


End file.
